Fair points right there. I've seen some not so good reports about the UKMFTS time to time over the years but I guess costs are more important here and governemt surely more to stick with UKMFTS leaving it as is or in case there's a miracle, actually try to fix it, rather than returning to a pipeline ran by MoD on their own. To be honest, I'm still not convinced that the privately bidded and ran training pipeline for pilots is the way to go in the future but I guess treasury is the king here.
Anyways, that means without any drastic change of MoD and cabinet approach to training pipeline, no UK trainer going forward. Now I understand better what kind of position Aeralis is in and how some former BAES folks are there.
To be fair for Leonardo, the important trainer replacement programs in NATO, probably those programs with more favorable requirements for the M-346 are yet to come and if anything, I'd expect quite a lot of NATO air forces to follow suit of Poland and Greece. Though I'm obviously not saying that M-346 will bag those programs without any serious competition. We'll see if their MoU with Airbus will eventually evolve into a bigger scope than just concerning ITS.
Coming back to the topic of this thread, yes the off-the-shelf license production is most likely and I agree, though I just wanted to see if there are any possibilities of a joint development of new trainer is there, since that is probably the only chance we see an indigenous "T-8" trainer. As you point out, the chances seems to be very slim.
Also, since UKMFTS will likely continue or even expand after 2033, yes you're probably right that T-4 replacement program wouldn't be part of GCAP, since both Italy and UK probably doesn't see any incentives for it. Though since T-4 replacement is huge in terms of program size, there's certainly quite a lot of leverage on their disposal for them to scale between M-346 and T-7A. I think said leverage could possibly be enough for them to demand the Italians a workshare deal, be it as part of GCAP or not.
With either M-346 or T-7A, they'll certainly going to need two different prop trainers, one ab initio and one basic, replacing both the T-7 and parts of T-4 assignments.
